Voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative
The voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some oral languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . It is the sibilant equivalent of the voiceless palatal fricative, and as such it can be transcribed in IPA with.
In British Received Pronunciation, after syllable-initial is realized as a devoiced palatal fricative. The amount of devoicing is variable, but the fully voiceless variant tends to be alveolo-palatal in the sequence:. It is a fricative, rather than a fricative element of an affricate because the preceding plosive remains alveolar, rather than becoming alveolo-palatal, as in Dutch.
The corresponding affricate can be written with or in narrow IPA, though is normally used in both cases. In the case of English, the sequence can be specified as as is normally apical, whereas alveolo-palatal consonants are laminal by definition.
An increasing number of British speakers merge this sequence with the voiceless palato-alveolar affricate : , mirroring Cockney, Australian English and New Zealand English. On the other hand, there is an opposite tendency in Canadian accents that have preserved, where the sequence tends to merge with the plain instead: , mirroring General American which does not allow to follow alveolar consonants in stressed syllables.Features
Features of the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative:Occurrence
